Whoopi Goldberg Only Cooks Over the Holidays

Actress Whoopi Goldberg only cooks twice a year – on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The Ghost star, who is afraid of flying, spends the festive season at her home in New York City, and invites friends who don’t have anywhere special to go to join her for a turkey dinner, prepared just the way her late mother used to make it, every Thanksgiving.

“Thanksgiving for me are (sic)… for the folks who don’t have family, so whoever shows up gets fed…,” she said in the days leading up to this year’s holiday. “I’m not a cook, I only make two things… but I make the hell out of them! I do (the turkey) the way my mum did it, and I remember that as a little kid, the smell of turkey when you wake up in the morning.”

The family recipe requires Whoopi to set her alarm for every two hours throughout the night on Thanksgiving eve, and she gets up to baste the bird.

“She (her mum) would put it (turkey) in at 9pm (on Thanksgiving eve) at 250 and she’d baste it all night, so by the time you got up at, like, 8am (on Thanksgiving Day)…, the whole house… smelled like turkey, it smelled like Thanksgiving,” she explained. “So that’s what I do, and my daughter does it (too).”

Whoopi continued, “I know I have to get up, so two times a year, I do what I’m supposed to do, and it’s really great.”

The Oscar winner likes to pair the turkey with a yam and marshmallow dish.

“And then I make this weird ‘souffle’,” she shared. “I open a whole bunch of cans of yams and I mash ’em up, and then I whip ’em, and then I put butter… and molasses, and I put a little agave, and I whip it some more, and then I put it in a pan and put a whole bunch of marshmallows… and then I stick it into the oven until the marshmallows are kinda burnt, and then I take it out and I’m like, ‘Souffle’s done!'”